Since at least two decades, light-weight TiAl alloys have been attracting increasing attention from the research community due to their potential for structural, high-temperature applications in aerospace and turbine blade industries. Among the different possible microstructures, especially the lamellar microstructures exhibit improved ductility at ambient and elevated temperatures in comparison with single crystals, while still showing sufficient creep resistance. Nevertheless, further improvements could be made if the origins of ductility in these microstructures were better understood.
To this end we carried out nanoindentation simulations in different bicrystals and lamellar structures of TiAl. The emphasis was put on structures containing several rotational